Amish shootings school demolished

Workers with machines moved in before dawn today and demolished the one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, where five US girls were shot dead and five others were injured on October 2.

Construction lights glared in the pre-dawn mist as an excavator began removing the porch of the school at about 4.45am local time, and heavy equipment knocked down the bell tower and toppled the walls within a few minutes.

The schoolhouse had been boarded up since the killings, with schooling moved to a nearby farm.

The Amish community hoped to bring some closure to the tragedy by razing the schoolhouse and leaving in its place a quiet pasture.

“It’s going to be razed and topsoil brought in and green grass planted,” said Mike Hart, a spokesman for the Bart Fire Company.

The destruction of the West Nickel Mines Amish School came a week after the solemn funerals of four of the five girls killed by gunman Charles Roberts. Roberts was armed with a shotgun, rifle, handgun and a stun gun and killed himself after shooting the girls.

The five girls wounded in the shooting are all still believed to be in hospital. The hospitals are no longer providing any information about the patients at the request of their families.

Hart, who has been co-ordinating activities with the Amish community and whose company will help provide security, said destroying the school was about trying to reach some closure.

Hart said private contractors were handling the demolition, and the debris would be hauled to a landfill.

Hart had said previously that classes were expected to resume this week at a makeshift schoolhouse in a garage on an Amish farm in the Nickel Mines area.